Despite Ace's protestations that she hates clowns, the Doctor takes the
TARDIS to Segonax to see the famed Psychic Circus. But there they
discover that the self-styled Greatest Show In The Galaxy has become
something sinister: its founder, Kingpin, has disappeared; the callous
Chief Clown deals violently with anyone who tries to flee; and
prospective Circus stars must entertain an enigmatic family -- or die.
The time travellers learn that the Psychic Circus has fallen under the
influence of the evil Gods of Ragnarok, and the Doctor's next
performance may be his last.

Production

Stephen Wyatt's first Doctor Who serial, Paradise Towers, had not even gone before the
cameras when he was approached to write a second story for the programme.
Producer John Nathan-Turner suggested a circus setting, thinking that
filming could take place at Longleat House, the home of a Doctor
Who exhibition since 1974; he also proposed the title The
Greatest Show In The Galaxy. With this notion as his starting point,
Wyatt's original pitch involved a circus infested with creatures who
lived underground. However, this seemed unfeasible -- especially when
the production team began to eye The Greatest Show In The Galaxy
as the three-part, studiobound serial for Season Twenty-Five. Instead,
Wyatt came up with the idea of a circus where the spectators are cajoled
into performing for a sinister family, only to inevitably fail to
entertain them and suffer a terrible fate. This was considered more
suitable, and the script for the first episode was commissioned on May
8th, 1987.

Over the following months, The Greatest Show In The Galaxy evolved
substantially. Originally, the story began with the Doctor and Mel
arriving at the circus, where they were soon thrust into the ring with a
punk werewolf, a creature called the Blob, the musclebound Nord
(inspired by the Marvel Comics superhero Thor), and an empath known as
the Non-Entity. Rather than performing solo, the characters competed
against each other for the family's entertainment in a series of games
and challenges. Of the circus staff, it was the Ringmaster who played
the most overtly villainous role. The alternative circus was more
high-tech and played a larger role, being occasionally glimpsed by Mel.
At the adventure's climax, the circus was destroyed when the Non-Entity
amplified the Doctor's rage at the needless deaths.

Originally, the circus was destroyed when the Non-Entity
amplified the Doctor's rage at the needless deaths

In later drafts, the Blob was replaced by a half-human mutant, the
Whizzkid, who then developed into a computer genius who was an expert at
all of the in-ring games and referred to himself as the Galactic Games
King. After his death, this character returned as a ghoulish
self-parody, with a robotic brain and a scoreboard body. Mel encountered
a friendly animal called the Squonk, who later evolved into a clown
creature referred to as a Honk. There was a love triangle between the
Ringmaster, the Chief Clown and the gypsy-like Box Office Lady (who was
originally envisaged as grandmother type), and the Non-Entity destroyed
the circus using the werewolf's fury rather than the Doctor's.

In September, however, it was decided that The Greatest Show In The
Galaxy should be expanded to four episodes, with The Happiness Patrol taking its place as the
three-part studio-only story. Not only did this give Wyatt greater
narrative space, it also meant that he could take advantage of location
filming, and therefore free his scripts from the confines of the big top
environment. As a result, the new first episode would now spend time
exploring the planet Segonax on which the Psychic Circus was located,
and the story as a whole would focus less on the notion of the performers
competing to survive. The final three episodes of The Greatest Show
In The Galaxy were commissioned on September 29th.

With Wyatt now in need of additional characters, Ben Aaronovitch -- who
was writing the Season Twenty-Five premiere Remembrance Of The Daleks -- suggested
introducing an explorer along the lines of Indiana Jones. This inspired
the creation of Captain Cook, whose demise was intended to provide the
cliffhanger for the new first episode. However, Wyatt enjoyed the
character so much that he greatly expanded his role throughout the
adventure, and even considered having Cook mysteriously survive the
Circus' destruction.

Also added at this point was the background to the Psychic Circus, which
reflected Wyatt's disenchantment with the hippie movement of the
Sixties. Elements of the Non-Entity and Honk characters were refashioned
as Deadbeat and Bellboy, while Ace replaced Mel. With the change in the
plot's emphasis, Whizzkid had become redundant in his Galactic Games
King incarnation, so it was decided to remould him as a parody of the
stereotypical Doctor Who fan. The werewolf character, now Cook's
associate Mags, originally came from the planet MacVulpine (rather than
Volpana) and spoke with a Glaswegian accent, but Nathan-Turner felt that
this was too silly. At one point, the Little Girl was given the name
Sandra.

Chris Jury (Deadbeat) had been one of the final candidates
for the role of the Seventh Doctor

The Greatest Show In The Galaxy was designated Serial 7J, and
assigned to director Alan Wareing. Wareing had previously worked on
Doctor Who as a production assistant on The
Keeper Of Traken and a production manager on Timelash. Nathan-Turner and former Doctor
Who script editor Eric Saward had helped Wareing with his
directorial training, since when he had worked on EastEnders and
Casualty. Cast as Deadbeat was Chris Jury, who had been one of
the final candidates for the role of the Seventh Doctor.

Production on The Greatest Show In The Galaxy began normally
enough, with location filming taking place at Warmwell Quarry in Warmwell,
Dorset from May 14th to 18th. The rocky wasteland was a departure from
Wyatt's description of Segonax as a grassy world. The first two days
dealt with scenes on the laneways and at the Stallslady's kiosk. On the
16th, a tent had been erected to pose as the exterior of the Psychic
Circus. Due to an equipment problem, a different and more violent type
of explosive was used for the Circus' destruction. Unfortunately, the
crew forgot to inform McCoy -- who nonetheless recorded the sequence of
the Doctor walking away from the erupting big top without batting an
eye.

On May 17th, material in and around the hippie bus was filmed; this was
the same vehicle which had featured as the tour bus in Delta And The Bannermen the year before.
Finally, the 18th was principally concerned with the large robot buried in
the sand. Unfortunately, poor weather meant that some planned shots had to
be abandoned, including the destruction of one of the clowns by the large
robot's laser blasts. Costume designer Rosalind Ebbutt had crafted the
robot clowns as echoes of the Chief Clown by basing their masks on a
cast of actor Ian Reddington's face.

Rehearsals then began for the two planned studio blocks at BBC Television
Centre: a three-day session beginning Tuesday, May 31st and a two-day
session from Wednesday, June 15th. For the Doctor's feats of
prestidigitation, McCoy worked behind closed doors with professional
magician Geoffrey Durham (better known as the Great Soprendo). On May
27th, however, asbestos was discovered in Television Centre Studio 2
during renovations, and traces of the dangerous material was subsequently
detected in almost all of the other studios. BBC management was left with
little choice but to suspend much of the Television Centre production
schedule until asbestos abatement procedures could be completed. This
meant that, at a minimum, the first studio block for The Greatest
Show In The Galaxy would not be able to proceed in TC6 as
planned.

BBC Elstree agreed to let the Doctor
Who team erect a tent on their parking lot for two weeks

Briefly, Nathan-Turner believed he had found an alternative in the form
of a warehouse facility in Bristol used for the medical drama
Casualty, only to see it reallocated to the biographical miniseries
Shadow Of The Noose. In desperation, Nathan-Turner and Wareing then
conceived a plan to erect an actual tent complex on a field off the A40.
When it was learned that they were restricted to using BBC premises,
designer David Laskey suggested using a car park or similar venue.
Finally, BBC Elstree in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire -- the home of the
popular soap opera EastEnders -- agreed to let the Doctor
Who team use their parking lot for two weeks.

While the construction of the necessary facilities outside BBC Elstree
(subsequently nicknamed “Laskey's Studio”) meant that work on
The Greatest Show In The Galaxy could resume, it was by no means
an ideal solution. Cast and crew would now have to contend with the noise
from pedestrian traffic, as well as airplanes landing at the nearby
Elstree Aerodrome. The production came under added pressure on June 3rd,
when the second studio session was also lost. BBC Planning was now
advocating the cancellation of The Greatest Show In The Galaxy, and
Nathan-Turner had to assure his superiors that the serial could be
completed at BBC Elstree within budget.

It was under these trying circumstances that recording resumed on June
6th. Each of the first five days was largely devoted to a single area of
the big top: the vestibule on the 6th, the ring on the 7th and 9th, the
backstage area with the cell on the 8th, and the corridors on the 10th.
Tempers were short throughout the shoot and, with limited cameras
available, Wareing had to work very efficiently. The last three days at
BBC Elstree then dealt with those scenes not simply set in the Psychic
Circus tent: the stone chamber on the 15th, the workshop and the TARDIS
console room on the 16th, and finally the ancient version of the Circus
on the 18th. On this last day, Lorna McCulloch replaced Kathryn Ludlow
as the Little Girl God due to restrictions on juvenile actors; Wareing's
own modulated voice would provide her dialogue. It was also planned to
record a model shot of the ancient Circus collapsing on the 18th, but
unfortunately an issue with the videotape meant that the resulting
footage was unusable, and there was no opportunity for a retake.

The planned broadcast order for Season Twenty-Five had
The Greatest Show In The Galaxy airing
second

The planned broadcast order for Season Twenty-Five had The Greatest
Show In The Galaxy airing second, immediately after Remembrance Of The Daleks. However, the
expected start of the season on September 7th was delayed by four weeks
because of BBC coverage of the Summer Olympic Games in Seoul, South
Korea. Nathan-Turner still wanted to lead off the year with the star
attraction of the Daleks, while Silver
Nemesis had been planned as the twenty-fifth anniversary story,
and so part one was locked into a broadcast on November 23rd -- the
actual date of Doctor Who's silver jubilee. With only three weeks
left between the two serials, this meant that The Greatest Show In
The Galaxy would have to be postponed until after Silver Nemesis, making it the new season
finale. Unfortunately, this created some inadvertent continuity errors:
Ace wears Flowerchild's earring in Silver
Nemesis despite not yet having visited Segonax, while the
destruction of her rucksack in that story is contradicted by its
presence in The Greatest Show In The Galaxy.

Although the production office was interested in commissioning a third
story from Wyatt, the writer was growing concerned about being pigeonholed
as part of the Doctor Who team and declined the invitation. Wyatt
has since been a mainstay on radio, in addition to writing several plays
and occasional television scripts for programmes such as Casualty,
The House Of Eliott and Family Affairs. Meanwhile, The
Greatest Show In The Galaxy episode four was broadcast on January 4th,
1989, bringing Doctor Who's twenty-fifth season to a close.